


PRELUDE: Introducing the Spider-Verse

by Ghost0



Series: The Spider War [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28250091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghost0/pseuds/Ghost0
Summary: On one Earth, a version of Spider-Man is on the hunt for two criminals that have secretly escaped Ravencroft. His search brings him across a man who seems to be able to produce webbing just like him! But that man escapes, and a different version of The Sppears with grave news. Doctor Strange is warned about a war that will bring people from other realities to his own, and he prepares to deal with whatever may come.
Series: The Spider War [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2069466





	PRELUDE: Introducing the Spider-Verse

EARTH 002012

The office of the Daily Bugle had framed a story they did a few years ago. Mr. Jameson didn’t like doing a piece where they heaped praise onto Spider-Man. He thought it made it seem like they were butt kissers to a vigilante. But he seemed to be content with the fact that it actually sold more newspaper than they ever sold in the past five years. It was argued to him that it represented a change of mood in the city for the better. The piece in question was hung in between two windows where the vigilante in question was seen currently swinging through the city of New York. The framed paper had a picture of Spider-Man about to engage with Aleksei Sytsevich in the streets. Spider-Man used his web to grab a manhole cover and was swinging it at the criminal operating a robotic rhino suit. The title above the picture declared the return of a hero.

The city’s hero swung as fast as he could, spying the police in a gun fight with a group of armed robbers. The sound of gunfire echoed across the street below him. Peter stuck to the side of the building high in the sky, trying to figure out the best way to approach the situation. Pushing himself off th building, he fell from the sky and pulled himself to the building the robbers had their back to. He shot a web downward to grab one of the robbers and pulled him up. A couple of the robbers closest to the targeted robber turned and looked up to see the web slinger. Peter carefully but quickly tossed the guy he caught to the side. The guy dropped his gun and ended up landing in a nearby dumpster on top of several bags of trash. A couple of the cops moved to arrest the man.

Spider-Man dropped down onto the ground behind the robbers. “Can you please tell your friend I didn’t mean to imply anything by throwing him into the trash?” He shot a couple of webs to jam the guns of the robbers. “I really hate to be the reason he gets low self-esteem.” He crouched and rolled forward on the ground, shooting webs at the legs of a couple of robbers and pulling them so that they fell onto the ground. He jumped up and faced the last robber. When he landed on the ground, he moved quickly and created a large amount of webbing, circling around the robber and binding the last man’s to his side and made his gun inaccessible. When he was done, he simply pushed one finger against the man’s torso and made him fall onto his back. “I can’t stress enough that I don’t want you all to feel bad about this!” He turned around to address all the robbers as the cops approached and started to gather them up. “You have all been great! I just have a little more experience than you. But maybe I will suggest doing something else, like start a dog grooming business. I like it when they put little bows on their heads, I can’t really put my finger on why.” He turned around and addressed one of the cops. “All yours!” He shot a web and pulled himself back into the air.

Peter went a couple of blocks over before settling on top one of the buildings. He moved so to make sure that he couldn’t be seen from the ground. Pulling off his mask, he checked his web shooters to make sure he had enough to get back home. He reached for his phone that he hides on his body, pulling it out and looking up the number he had on speed dial. It rang a few times before the other guy picked up. “Hey there. Just checking in. Don’t worry, I’m not swinging and talking on the phone.”

“Funny. But I don’t suggest you use it for your stand up.” The voice on the other end belonged to a reporter from the Daily Bugle, Tom Amos. “Listen, can you meet tonight? I think I might actually have something that you can use.”

“Same place and time.” He hung up the phone. As he put it away, he thought over about the investigation he had been working on. Despite the fact that Harry and Dr. Connors have been sent to Ravencroft, he hadn’t been able to see them whenever he went to visit them under his civilian identity. It could be that they just don’t allow them to have visitors, but something was nagging him in the back of his head. He thinks Ravencroft is covering something involving them. College has been taking up a lot of his time, so he had to reach out to a reporter to try and see if he can find anything. And that seems like it might actually be paying off. Jumping off the edge, he swung back home to try and get five minutes of sleep and do a couple hours of studying. Good thing he has fun while doing this, otherwise he would have gone all work and no play crazy a while ago.

******

The sun was starting to set. Tom Amos took a long drag from his cigarette while he waited for the red and blue vigilante on the roof of the Daily Bugle. He knew he was here when he heard a voice behind him. “Has the wife talked to you about that? I mean, feel free to do you, but I’m not sure if you guys are planning anything where secondhand smoke could be a bad thing.”  
The reporter turned around and looked at Spider-Man, who was crouching on the building ledge. “She’s out of town this weekend. Last one, and this time I mean it.” He dropped it onto the ground and crushed it under his foot.

“Hope you aren’t stressed because of me? I was just telling these angry gun wielding guys I try to bring as little stress as I can.”

“Don’t give yourself that much credit kid.” He turned around and walked a little bit towards him. “But I’ll admit that it took some work and a few exchange of goods that are technically bribes. But it’s in the name of the truth, so I think that balances out my karma.” He crossed his arms. “Seems like Osborn and Connors have been secretly transported to another location. A little back and forth at first, but they have been permanently relocated for a couple of months now.”

“But if they aren’t at Ravencroft, why haven’t they done anything?”

Tom shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they are working on a scheme together. None of the guards at the institute could give me any names for people, but the vehicles that come and get them have a logo on them. Maguire Industries. Looked it up, they are a shipping company that has routes going all across the world. They also own a large warehouse in the meatpacking district. Can’t confirm if they are still there, but hopefully they left behind something that can tell you where to go.”

Spider-Man nodded. Tom handed him a piece of paper with an address. “I really appreciate it. Just tell me what I kind of fiction books you like to read and I’ll get you something!” He jumped off the building before Tom could respond. But he thought he heard him yell out romance. He’ll have to double check with him later. He swung through the city, making his way over to the district in question. He landed on a building to collect his bearings. Checking the street names below, he double checked the address and determined which direction to go in. 

He landed on top of the warehouse. He found an opening on top that he could sneak through. Once inside and on the ceiling, he stuck to the shadows as much as possible. He didn’t see anyone at first, but it seemed liked they were still using this place. A bunch of technological gear and devices were spread out and on display. Some of them were things he had never seen before. He saw a pair of mechanical wings, and there was some sort of backpack that had mechanical arms coming out of it. He moved down from the ceiling and made his way down one of the walls. That was when he saw a couple of people moving towards the middle of the floor. One man was wearing a gray trench coat and wore a hat, shadowing his face so he couldn’t see any distinct features. This guy was talking to the man walking beside him, who stood out more to Peter. He couldn’t explain why, but there was something about him that seemed familiar.

This guy wore a red coat. The kind where the left side of the jacket reached around to a set of buttons on the far right. Leather was the material of the jacket, the main color was a dark shade of red but there was a secondary color, black. The rest of the outfit was jeans and black boots. From where he was positioned, he could only see the right side of this man’s face. There was a scar on his face that almost crossed over his eye. He had a beard and his brown hair was combed towards the right side of his body. He couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Peter strained to lean forward to see if he can pick up a few words. But unfortunately, moving his head forward those few extra inches was enough for the man in the red jacket to react.

He moved far quicker than he expected him to. But that wasn’t the most surprising thing. Before he knew it, his face was hit with a familiar white substance. He was forced off the wall and hit the floor hard. His head was ringing, rubbing and holding his head as he forced himself onto his hands and knees. His hearing was just coming back into focus when he looked up to try and get a good look at both men. With a flash of red electric light, both of them were suddenly gone from the warehouse. He went from all fours to just on his knees, looking at the spot in confusion. As he was trying to figure out who those men could have been, another source of light suddenly appeared in the warehouse.

This time, the electric light was yellow. Peter had to bring his hand up to his face to block the light as he adjusted to get used to it. He sensed the light dimmer and eventually fade out. As he pulled his hand back down, he titled his head in confusion but stayed on guard. The person in the room sported a metallic version of Peter’s spider suit. Only instead of blue, black was the second color. The person wearing the suit was a woman, and he could see her face. Well, with the exception of a pair of googles over her eyes which glowed red. Her long red hair hung down from her head. Instead of standing on the ground, four robotic spider legs coming from the back of her suit extended out and pushed themselves against two tables the people from before were using to spread out their gear. So her body hung in the air between the tables, her right arm held in front of her as her left hand played with what he assumed were buttons on the forearm part.

“Damn it! I just missed them!” The girl in the metal spider suit sighed. She turned her head and noticed Peter. “Oh. You must be this Earth’s Peter. Or at the very least it’s Spider-Man.”

“Uh, how do you know that?” He stood up onto his feet. “Do I have a superhero stalker?”

She snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. Not exactly my type.” She took note of the way he was holding his head and the way he carefully moved. “Were you previously engaged with an opponent?”

“I mean, kind of. I was here on more of a recon thing, but one of the guys just kind of – “

“Which guy?” She cut him off. Her spider legs lowered her real body so that her feet were connected to the ground. 

“Didn’t exactly exchange business cards. Wore a red leather jacket if that helps at all.”

“Hmmm. Explains why he left. Probably for the best that I wasn’t here when they were. This is a place he feels comfortable in, filled with his tools. It would be nearly impossible to take him one on one.” Turning her head, she located a forgotten laptop. Rushing over, a pocket near her suit’s waist opened and she pulled out a flash drive. Plugging it in, she typed faster than what Peter thought was humanly possible. 

He moved towards her. “I get you must have some arrogant super genius thing going. But if you could tell me your name, where you came from, and what the Hell is going on, that would be great.”

“First name Mary-Jane. Last name is Watson-Octavius.” She looked up and pulled the googles off her face to look back at him. “I’m from a parallel Earth. Which should be obvious since I referred to you as this Earth’s Spider-Man. And as for what is going on…hold on a moment.” She turned back to her computer. After she finished downloading everything, she inserted the flash drive back into her suit’s pocket. “There! Now with my map of the multiverse complete, I should be able to come up with a strategy. No, wait…still don’t know where he went.”

As Mary Jane talked to herself, Peter looked around the room and spotted something in a trash can. It looked like food wrappers, probably from something like a cheeseburger. “If you have some sort of locator that uses DNA, which at this point seems like you do, you could try that.”

She turned around and her eyes focused. Rushing over, she grabbed the wrappers from the trash. “You are actually right. Lucky guess. If I can get a sample of his DNA from this, I should be able to pinpoint which Earth he has gone to.”

She turned to Peter Parker. “All right, you’ll think I am an asshole for this. But I am not going to tell you just yet what is going on. Right now, the only thing you need to know is that we need to go to whatever Earth he just went to. If we act quick enough, we can stop him from killing another Spider-Man.”

******

EARTH 002008

Doctor Strange was in the library of the New York Sanctum Sanctorum. He stood up to put away one of the texts he was brushing up on. When he turned around and exited the room he felt a dark presence. He walked down the hallway, slowly moving until he was at the top of the stairs, looking down towards the lobby beneath the stairs and in front of the door leaving the Sanctorum. 

“Love what you have done with the place.” The strange man wore a red suit with a black tie. He wore sunglasses and his red hair was long, reaching his shoulders. A black over coat hung on his shoulders. “I don’t recall your predecessor ever using the New York location. Interesting for a Sorcerer Supreme to make his switch his residence to a city that just feels so devoid of magic. I can’t remember the last time a Broadway show left me in awe.”

“Whoever you are, I suggest you leave of your own accord.” Strange warned the man in the red suit. “Otherwise I will be forced to escort you out myself.” He could feel his cloak getting ready to move at any time. But the strange man simply motioned with his hand, trying to tell Strange to calm down.

“I’m not here to get in a fight. But I will admit, it hurts me that you don’t recognize me. But I guess I can blame that brain fart on the fact that you had been dead for five years. Traumatic experiences can have such a toll on the mind.” Doctor Strange walked down the stairs. As he did so, the man kept talking. “I felt like I should be giving you a heads up that an otherworldly visitor has arrived in this city. I know you tend to be territorial when it comes to who can visit your precious blue marble.”

Strange reached the ground floor. “I appreciate your warning. I assure you that whoever you brought here, I can take care of.”

“I didn’t send him here! Well, if I am being honest, I did give him a push to get him to create the means to travel here. But the decision to come to this planet was all of his own choosing.” The man in red grinned. “I had fun watching him on his little mission for a while. But I think I would get more enjoyment out of seeing his prey realize who he is and desperately try to fight back. Only to fail and die by his hands. I feel there is more…flavor to such a performance. Well, I should be off now. Have fun with all the itsy bitsy creatures.”

The man vanished. Right in front of him, no portal or anything to indicate a departure. Just as Strange was beginning to wonder if anyone was every really there, he heard Wong come down from the stairs. “Are you heading out to get some take out? I feel in the mood to try the McRib. I heard it is a delicacy that only comes for a limited time.”

Strange turned toward Wong. “Later. Right now I need to reach out and see if there have been any dimensional openings in the city.” He moved past Wong and headed up the stairs. As Strange examined the amount of magical activity in the city, the war was about to commence.


End file.
